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> To investors, the math just didn’t check out. Why serve a highly fragmented, emotional, low-budget small business audience when 30% of them will be out of bus

> To investors, the math just didn’t check out. Why serve a highly fragmented, emotional, low-budget small business audience when 30% of them will be out of business in 2 years, and 50% of them will fail within the next 5 years? What Ben understood from personal experience was that even when solo-preneurs fail, they keep their email lists alive, and most of them start something new some time down the road. Always encouraging to hear that you may be working on something worthwhile even if smart people still don’t get it. Even some smart friends of mine have been pretty unconvinced simply because they don’t understand the domain, or maybe they’re just not that interested. Investors are often pretty smart, but apparently those they spoke with were biased against the massive small business market. Conventional hurdles of selling and retaining such customers didn’t apply to Mailchimp but it was difficult for them to see that. Today, Mailchimp still has over half the market.

Judgmentality 6y ago
> Always encouraging to hear that you may be working on something worthwhile even if smart people still don’t get it. People very rarely "get it" at first for things that become big. Anything obvious will already be attempted by larger corporations. Google was initially so unappealing to investors they would go out the backdoor to avoid talking to the founders. AirBnB has a long, fascinating story of them struggling to get off the ground. Amazon was laughed at for competing with brick and mortar. Tesla was considered idiotic to compete with big auto, who presumably could put their weight behind electric and crush them. Likewise SpaceX was crazy to complete with legacy defense contractors. And so on. Also, from personal experience, most investors aren't that smart. Investors are just people. How smart do you think the average person is?
- ampdepolymerase 6y ago
  They do have money though.
  - Judgmentality 6y ago
    Something most people have to learn the hard way is that bad investors are worse than no investors. This isn't just my opinion, I was originally taught that by YC. And while I don't normally agree with this guy, he says some salient things here. https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/vinod-khosla/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/vinod-khosla/

Judgmentality 6y ago

> Always encouraging to hear that you may be working on something worthwhile even if smart people still don’t get it. People very rarely "get it" at first for things that become big. Anything obvious will already be attempted by larger corporations. Google was initially so unappealing to investors they would go out the backdoor to avoid talking to the founders. AirBnB has a long, fascinating story of them struggling to get off the ground. Amazon was laughed at for competing with brick and mortar. Tesla was considered idiotic to compete with big auto, who presumably could put their weight behind electric and crush them. Likewise SpaceX was crazy to complete with legacy defense contractors. And so on. Also, from personal experience, most investors aren't that smart. Investors are just people. How smart do you think the average person is?

ampdepolymerase 6y ago
They do have money though.
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  Something most people have to learn the hard way is that bad investors are worse than no investors. This isn't just my opinion, I was originally taught that by YC. And while I don't normally agree with this guy, he says some salient things here. https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/vinod-khosla/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/09/11/vinod-khosla/